Poland emerged tonight as the next potential victim of Reich expansion, cast by Nazi foreign policy for the leading tragic role played by Czechoslovakia in 1938.
This was the conviction of competent sources after close study of today’s Reichstag speech by Chancellor Hitler, in which the Fuehrer denounced the Berlin-Warsaw Friendship Treaty and served demands on Poland believed so extreme that Warsaw will find it impossible to meet them.
Characteristic of the severity of the German position was the disclosure by authoritative circles that the Reich expects its proposed “extra-territorial highway” across the Polish Corridor to be 15 miles wide.
The full weight of Nazi diplomacy and propaganda, it was predicted, will soon be thrown against Poland, and the first blow will be struck through excitation of the minorities in that country, especially the Ukrainians and Lithuanians.
Precisely the same method was used with spectacular success in the Reich’s annexation of the Sudetenland last September and the final dismemberment of Czechoslovakia scarcely a month ago.
For Lithuania, from whom Hitler took Memel in March, the Chancellor had kind words to say in his speech today, and economic negotiations are in full swing for settlement of Kaunas’ claims after surrender of the Baltic port.
As for the Ukraine, best-informed observers were convinced that Nazi Germany still cherished ambitions, given substance by the research of “Aryan” historians, to carry the Reich’s ultimate frontiers to the Ural and Caucasian mountains, engulfing vast Ukraine territory now held mainly by Poland, Rumania and Russia.
Poland stands squarely on this road of Nazi expansion. The Ukraine has to be won either with Poland’s aid or against her. Since Poland, according to the Nazi point of view, has chosen to be antagonistic by joining in the Anglo-French plan to “encircle” Germany, she must be rendered helpless.
The Nazi strategy, it was said, would use the minorities as the first weapon, with the Reich posing as the protector of the “oppressed” Lithuanians, Ukrainians and other national groups. Concurrently a campaign would develop to isolate Poland through the courting of Lithuania to the North, and Rumania on the South.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
